Poet Robert Francis Dies at 85

Robert Churchill Francis, described by his longtime friend Robert Frost as “the best neglected poet,” has died at age 85.

Francis, who died Monday in a hospital in Northampton, had lived in a two-room home here for more than 40 years. In 1984, he received the Academy of American Poets Fellowship Award for distinguished achievement.

Born in Upland, Pa., Francis moved to Amherst in 1926 shortly after graduating from Harvard University. He taught high school for one year, then devoted his life to poetry.

“My speciality has been not to earn much but to spend little,” Francis told the Daily Hampshire Gazette in a 1981 interview.

The publication in 1936 of his first collection of poems, “Stand With Me Here,” brought him an invitation to be a fellow at the Breadloaf Writers Conference, and two years later he received the Shelly Memorial Prize.

He also served as Phi Beta Kappa poet at Tufts and Harvard universities and in 1957 received the Rome Prize Fellowship given by the American Academy of Art and Letters.